“If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement, and I think they follow the law….We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there.” [emphasis added]

“We have to keep this country safe. This is a dangerous place. Make no mistake about it. It’s very cute to go and to blame everybody and say we should stay away from anything that smacks of intelligence gathering. The job of our law enforcement is to make sure that they prevent things. And you only do that by being proactive.”

Bloomberg then went on an odd rant, connecting the NYPD’s racial and religious profiling of Muslims to our cherished freedom of speech:

You have to respect people’s right to privacy. You have to obey the law. And I think the police officers across this country, at the federal level, state level, the city level, do that. But having said all of that, you are not going to survive, you will not be able to be a journalist and write what you want to say if the people who want to take away your freedoms are allowed to succeed.

Great… We don’t want the “people who want to take away your freedoms” [terrorists] to succeed. So to make sure that they don’t succeed, we will take away our own freedoms.

To make sure others don’t destroy what’s so great about America, we’ll destroy ourselves.

Take that, terrorists! You didn’t get to destroy us after all. We did it to ourselves.

Mr. Bloomberg, where you are choosing to stand in this time of crisis is unbecoming of the leader of one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world.

Mr. Bloomberg: Allow me to introduce you to a person you seem to have forgotten about. A fairly important person, named Benjamin Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Mr. Bloomberg: This choice between “essential liberty” and “a little temporary safety” is a false one, and unworthy of our American Dream.

Mr. Bloomberg: By profiling, spying on, and marginalizing the weakest and most vilified citizens of our country, you trample on the liberties of all of us, and fail to deliver us safety. Two losses, with no gain.